The present invention relates to a cloth-cutting machine designed to cut pieces of cloth on a working table by a cutting means provided with an automatic cutter wherein said cutting means is suspended above the working table to freely move in the horizontal direction, manual movement causing the cutter to cut pieces of cloth on the working table to a predetermined form.
There is well-known a cloth-cutting machine of this type wherein cutting means, having an automatic cutter, is suspended from a support arm which can move in the horizontal direction, at a certain distance from the upper surface of horizontal working table, manual movement causing the cutter to cut pieces of cloth on the working table to a predetermined form. In the case of cutting pieces of cloth by the cloth-cutting machine of this type, it is necessary that the cutting means can freely move on the working table. However, in the prior art machine the support arm for the cutting means was itself supported on one side of the working table. Therefore, the machine was inferior in working capability when the whole surface of working table was used to cut pieces of cloth. In addition, the support arm supported on one side of working table exerted an unbalanced load on the working table, tending to deform the table. Therefore, the working table must have a structure especially reinforced at the outset.
It is often necessary with the cloth-cutting machine of this type to move the cutting means over certain pieces of cloth on the working table which need not be cut, in order to reach other pieces of cloth which must be cut, termed a "fly-over" or "flying-over" operation. However, the prior art machine could not carry out such flying-over operation of the cutting means, making it necessary to move the cutting means so as to avoid certain pieces of cloth on the working table. This was a troublesome operation.
Further, the prior art machine employed compressed coil springs to absorb vibration caused at the time of cutting operation, but these compressed coil springs were not effective enough in vibration absorption to prevent deleterious effects on each of machine elements due to such unabsorbed vibration.